All posts tagged New York House of the Day

The pool area of a vacation home in East Hampton, N.Y., shared by a family.

If you get along well enough with your family, sharing a vacation home can get you a holiday at a discounted price. But it can also be tricky, as you deal with changes in personal circumstances. Developments spoke to some homeowners for tips on the best way to share a vacation home.

To start, having common interests can help ensure a family enjoys—and doesn’t resent—shared holiday time, according to the owner of today’s New York House of the Day, a family vacation home since 1979 and rebuilt in 2008.

Phyllis Shalant, a children’s book author, lives in White Plains, N.Y., and owns the property with her husband, Herb, an orthotist and prosthetist, and his brother, Joseph, a retired lawyer who lives in Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades. Ms. Shalant says the house was a great gathering place for the adults and their children and later, grandchildren, who would often partake in outdoor activities together, taking advantage of the property’s location on the shores of Gardiners Bay. “We’re very much an outdoor family and love nature,” says Ms. Shallant.

Each of the home’s four rooms have water views and private decks while an open-plan kitchen and living room, as well as shared decking upstairs and downstairs, gave the family a place to gather. “You have to respect each other’s space,” advises Ms. Shalant. We don’t always have to do everything together. Cooking together is fun, hanging around on the beach—we do some shared activity, and sometimes we go off on our own.” Read More »

Still, some pets have appeared in WSJ House of the Day photos. See a slide show.

While the prized possessions of property owners might feature in residential listing photographs—artwork, furniture, décor—there’s one thing that won’t: their pets. No matter how cute, fluffy or personable they might make a property for pet lovers; marketing directors have traditionally shied away from including them in listings.

“A pet is not a universally appealing value proposition in a home,” says Nicole Oge, senior vice president of marketing at Town Residential. “Eight out ten people—if you show them a photo with a dog in it, they wouldn’t remember the apartment, they would remember the dog.”